Name: The Secret History
Rating: 4.267068965517241 (2320 reviews)
ISBN: 9781400031702

Donna Tartt

Richard Papen had never been to New England before his nineteenth year. Then he arrived at Hampden College and quickly became seduced by the sweet, dark rhythms of campus life – in particular by an elite group of five students, Greek scholars, worldly, self-assured, and at first glance, highly unapproachable.

The Secret History 

Yoana Terzieva 

michaela

Lieke Nieuwlaat 

giuli

laila

julia

sybil

kristin :)

Iris van der zanden

lemon

tara  (she/her)

Nihil sub sole novum, I thought as I walked back down the hall to my room. Any action, in the fullness of time, sinks to nothingness.

Marz 

llikaditoo 

sofia mae

Tija

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. 

And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? 

Victoria Justice

Laura

And always, always, that same toast. Live forever. 

Victoria Morris

Inês Lemos S.

soph 

“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”

Stavros Kosmas

juana de arco si estuviera cronicamente online

🎠

The dead appear to us in dreams, said Julian, because that's the only way they can make us see them; what we see is only a projection, beamed from a great distance, light shining at us from a dead star... 

saad

Victoria

Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not. 

Caroline 

Franzi

Lucia 

Storm

trezaa

Yoko simons 

I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive.

Erin McDonald

jenna de nobrega 

lulu p :)

Julie <3

percy

Aimee :)

I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way. 

Lili V Guba

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”

Richard Papen, a relatively impoverished student at a New England college, falls in with an exclusive clique of rich, worldly Greek scholars and soon learns the dreadful secret that keeps them together. Reader's Guide included. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

The Secret History

i have this strangely pleasant feeling that i'll never actually find a book like this ever again... it was beautifully twisted and i loved it wholly, so perhaps beauty really is terror and i'll just have to come back again and again

yachii

Truly deserving of the accolade 'modern classic', Donna Tartt's novel is a remarkable achievement - compelling and elegant, dramatic and playful. Under the influence of their charismatic Classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality, their lives are changed profoundly and for ever.

I could have read this book forever and been content, but the ending really sealed the 5/5 for me. I think the prose and commitment to ideas was excellent.

Hayley Sayre

Terribly difficult to get into and slightly disappointing to finish. 

The plot takes 150 pages and at least 3 months of me picking it up and putting it back down 10 minutes later to really pick up. Once it picks up it was quite good and I found myself raving about it to anyone who would listen, only to embarrass myself when I realized the plot completely falls off a cliff—along with Bunny—at the climax. 

Don’t get me wrong, I thought the ending was great, but all the moments between Bunny’s funeral and that had me wondering if that was really all this book had to offer. 

Mikala Hunt

Terribly difficult to get into and slightly disappointing to finish. 

The plot takes 150 pages and at least 3 months of me picking it up and putting it back down 10 minutes later to really pick up. Once it picks up it was quite good and I found myself raving about it to anyone who would listen, only to embarrass myself when I realized the plot completely falls off a cliff—along with Bunny—at the climax. 

Don’t get me wrong, I thought the ending was great, but all the moments between Bunny’s funeral and that had me wondering if that was really all this book had to offer. 



Edwin Lang

A question that I am sure occurred to Donna Tartt, the author of The Secret History, as well as to anyone reading her novel is why would anyone want to read about five rich kids and one self-professed liar from California. It occurred to me on page 180. Strangely, the book is really compelling. The liar, Richard Papen, is now twenty-eight and narrating the story of what happened to him in his first year at Hampden, in picturesque Vermont, after having abandoned the West coast to study ancient Greek. He was then gloomy and melancholy and felt his existence, at twenty, had been tainted by friendlessness, a mean father, a distant mother, an ugly house, a haircut too short and the need to wear cheap clothes and by the general blandness of his Californian small town. Through persistence and something of a miracle he received a scholarship to attend Hampden. Almost immediately Richard is attracted to an idiosyncratic professor, Julian Morrow, offering classes in ancient Greek to a class-sized at five. Richard would be six and thus unacceptable. Nonetheless. he manages to beguile his way into this master class. Here he meets the clique: Henry Winter, protagonist, a taciturn and wealthy but brilliant classicist and linguist who never completed grade ten; the twins, Camilla and Charles McCauley, clean, graceful and cheerful Flemish angelic orphans who were raised by their domineering and rich grandparents; Francis Abernathy, a wealthy Bostonian, born to an unmarried teen mother, with both he and his mother subsequently raised by rich grandparents, reputed to be decadent (and gay) but a decent and sensitive fellow; and Edmund “Bunny” Corcoran, a successful banker’s son, one of five boys who is a former football star and today is a sloppy, loud, obnoxiously garrulous, gum-chewing (but pleasant) lout and who is the antagonist. The story really begins when as readers around page 170 we learn that four of them (Henry, the twins and Francis) go on a Bacchanal, and when in a drunken hallucogenic state, Henry accidently kills a man, a farmer who had aggressively demanded that the kids leave his property. I call them ‘kids’ because, although twenty or twenty-one years old, all are alone, even Richard and Bunny when they learn of the story, groping their way through this tragedy and catastrophe in their otherwise well-ordered and happy lives. Even Julian Morrow is no help, he who had seduced their minds with silly ideas, many of which were inherently revolutionary. What I liked about Donna Tartt’s approach was that she withheld judgment and basically unfolds the drama in their still-young and unformed lives from their various perspectives, always with Richard narrating and from his own perspective. We readers are also not subjected to a morality tale. We are also not subjected to an imposition of the accepted State moral fable wherein a perpetrator is necessarily punished by his or her conscience (as per Dostoyevsky), or by State law or by Fate’s exacting revenge. In this it is a kind tale. Tragedy though hangs over all like a Damocles sword and there are repercussions. Bunny dies. Julian Morrow reveals himself for what he really is. The twins break. And even Richard redeems himself. Carefully constructed edifices fall. Henry though is and remains heroic and intact. I liked The Secret History a lot and recommend it. Edwin

Donna Tartt's The Secret History is the original American campus novel. When Richard Papen joins an elite group of clever misfits at his New England college, it seems he can finally become the person he wants to be. But the moral boundaries he will cross with his new friends - and the deaths they are responsible for - will change all of their lives forever. The Secret History recounts the terrible price we pay for mistakes made on the dark journey to adulthood.

cass

wow, okay, where to begin?
i will be the first to admit that i struggled to get into this book initially - the first 100-200 pages felt largely purposeless, and i was looking for a clear plot to grip onto, that i know the book had to have had due to praise from others on the plot line. but oh my god, when this book is good, its fucking good. the characters are complex in a way that feels so real and humane, <spoiler> and the development of charles and his addiction and slow fall to insanity was masterfully constructed </spoiler> and came across so perfectly. this for me is the brilliance within donna tartt, her ability to perfectly crete characters like no one else. 
i think because the book was written in the 90s, the air of pseudo intellectualism seemed more captaviating and apparent…. and legit?? in comparison to contemporary campus novels, the deeper story and ideas felt more grounded and genuine, and i feel that the era it was written and the pacing is generally the reason behind this.
julian, to me, was a very puzzling character. he felt so minor - i didn’t really find myself being able to develop a connection or deep affection to him in the way that the classics group did. we were consistently told about this love all 5 of them had felt towards him as the professor, but apart from henry, and potentially francis, i couldn’t really understand how richard (and even the twins?!) had come to develop such strong emotions towards him. i wish we had gotten to see the establishment of that connection more; it felt very…. i don’t even know, but i really wanted more purpose behind richard’s kinship for julian he intensely detailed in the closing chapters of the novel. 
donna tart is a brilliant writer, i have zero doubt in my mind about that. i can very clearly see why it’s so loved, because it truly feels so human, really fucking liked this, would have been higher if it was a bit shorter, i really felt there was a lot of aspects that didn’t necessarily need to be included and made the novel even longer.

Truly deserving of the accolade Modern Classic, Donna Tartt's cult bestseller The Secret History is a remarkable achievement - both compelling and elegant, dramatic and playful.'A haunting, compelling and brilliant piece of fiction' The Times'So irresistible and seductive it's almost a guilty pleasure' GuardianUnder the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and for ever.'Enthralling . . . image the plot of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment crossed with the story of Euripides' Bacchae set against the backdrop of Bret Easton Ellis's The Rules of Attraction . . . forceful, cerebral and impeccably controlled . . . ferociously well-paced . . . remarkably powerful' The New York Times'Donna Tartt is an amazingly good writer. She's dense, she's allusive. She's a gorgeous storyteller' Stephen KingDonna Tartt was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, and is a graduate of Bennington College. She is the author of the novels The Secret History and The Little Friend, which have been translated into thirty languages, and The Goldfinch.

Sara T-son

A misfit at an exclusive New England college, Richard finds kindred spirits in the five eccentric students of his ancient Greek class. But his new friends have a horrific secret. When blackmail and violence threaten to blow their privileged lives apart, they drag Richard into the nightmare that engulfs them. And soon they enter a terrifying heart of darkness from which they may never return.

Jennifer

Crime and Punishment meets a more messed up version of How To Get Away With Murder season one + homosexuality + Greek history and mythology + sexual taboos 

aishah

varsha venkat

Tajemna historia

erin

this book is full of terrible people tainted with probably what you might think is the worst world can offer, amoral and self-centred and completely fucked-up, but since it’s fiction i can’t even bring myself to hate them. well, maybe except bunny, but he was entertaining at times, quite funny, so i kind of feel slightly teeny tiny little bit bad for him. but he’s a racist bigot so i don’t really care /that/ much. henry is literally the worst of them all (or not! it depends on whether or not you interpret how he ended up doing things he did), but he’s also my lil meow meow and i will fight anyone to defend him. he's unhinged and insane and i absolutely love it about him. francis is also one of my favorites here, because he’s just like me (gay anxious and sewercidal). he’s also got this sensitive heart, he’s a little bit weak, and he’s so likeable; but he’s always the one that seems to exist without much hope, a bit hysterical. he was also the one who ended up being the Good one, at least it seemed that way to me. i want to step into that book and make him happy !!! it’s tearing me apart. i also feel super bad for charles; he’s the one who had to deal with all the aftermath, and in the end he’s made into this ruined person. he’s not a saint, but there’s something weirdly likeable about him. camilla, on the other hand, has the guts to be unapologetic, she’s distant and mysterious and cold and I LOVE HER.

coco nini

started a bit slow for me, but good either way !! 

The Secret History by Donna Tartt ⭐⭐⭐⭐

from the beginning, i was enticed by reading it more and finished it asap because i was confused with what this book all about. i got many spoilers from pinterest and booktok, why would they do it? but as i read it day by day, there was full tension in this book. i felt nervous and amazed by how it's written and there were words that i'm not really familiar with. all in all, it's a good book and i felt sad by the last parts of it. this was the first time i read a long book with over 500 pages, and the first time i read a mystery/thriller book.

stephie

The Secret History by Donna Tartt ⭐⭐⭐⭐
from the beginning, i was enticed by reading it more and finished it asap because i was confused with what this book all about. i got many spoilers from pinterest and booktok, why would they do it? but as i read it day by day, there was full tension in this book. i felt nervous and amazed by how it's written and there were words that i'm not really familiar with. all in all, it's a good book and i felt sad by the last parts of it. this was the first time i read a long book with over 500 pages, and the first time i read a mystery/thriller book.

Last half of the book really picked up but omg the first half was slow. It took me forever to get through. (Yes, read it while moving / nesting for my first child but still, longer than it should have) 

That being said, Tartt is a wonderful writer and is creative with plot and characters. 

Sarah Wilson

Last half of the book really picked up but omg the first half was slow. It took me forever to get through. (Yes, read it while moving / nesting for my first child but still, longer than it should have) 

That being said, Tartt is a wonderful writer and is creative with plot and characters. 

Yulez

Fatima Anwar Kamal

i understand the obsession people feel with the characters. i just didn't feel the same way about them. but i really enjoyed the experience of reading this book

Donna Tartt, winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for her most recent novel, The Goldfinch, established herself as a major talent with The Secret History, which has become a contemporary classic. Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and forever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill.

i found the writing style very seamless and vivid, and plot is also gripping. but at the end of the day, dark academia is not a genre i would personally return to. i have no previous background nor interest in the classics and all the characters read as insufferable (not in a good way) and very white. i think the second half of the book is a tad glacial, with motives not as fleshed out as they were in the first half. i respect those who indulge in the aesthetic, though! 

kate 

A good one-time read. Unexpected ending, and I finished this book in 2 days....which means that it kept me engaged, and I just want to know what happens next. Very unique setting and the theme of the book will make you pause and think of what's the fuck is going on. 

Tanishq Khandelwal

maybe i'm a bit biased as this is pretty much my first foray into this type of novel, but i just really loved it. lauded among my peers who have long finished it, i had high hopes and often expressed my live reactions to them; in hindsight, probably very amusing to them considering the wishy washy perspective i had on the classics students (i started off heavily favoring henry, ended a big francis fan).

i adore the way this is written. tartt's way of prose is distinguishable and stands the test of time remarkably well. as for characterization, all of them kept me on my toes until the epilogue (well, save for bunny for obvious reasons). i kind of needed more on julian, but it's easy to accept that anything less than his permanently pedestaled self would be disingenuous to the view of chosen narrator, richard papen.

there is so much to take and run with here due to how restrained parts of the narrative were. additionally, i'd like to commend one of the more underrated parts of the writing process—the utilization of scene cuts. they were aptly and intentionally done here, leaving me to pore over certain passages more than i would have otherwise.

rini

maybe i'm a bit biased as this is pretty much my first foray into this type of novel, but i just really loved it. lauded among my peers who have long finished it, i had high hopes and often expressed my live reactions to them; in hindsight, probably very amusing to them considering the wishy washy perspective i had on the classics students (i started off heavily favoring henry, ended a big francis fan).

i adore the way this is written. tartt's way of prose is distinguishable and stands the test of time remarkably well. as for characterization, all of them kept me on my toes until the epilogue (well, save for bunny for obvious reasons). i kind of needed more on julian, but it's easy to accept that anything less than his permanently pedestaled self would be disingenuous to the view of chosen narrator, richard papen.

there is so much to take and run with here due to how restrained parts of the narrative were. additionally, i'd like to commend one of the more underrated parts of the writing process—the utilization of scene cuts. they were aptly and intentionally done here, leaving me to pore over certain passages more than i would have otherwise.

book so good i can't stop thinking about it...

mint

Extremely incredible writing for a debut novel. Though telling the story from a first person perspective, Tartt knows how to make it a compelling and engaging story. Love every single page of it.

Alisha

this book has caused me a number of nightmares. nonetheless, it was addictive and i loved every second of it. donna tartt’s writing is just chefs kiss. 

this fuckass book consumed me like i feel like i will never find another book i’ll like this much again i feel sick to my stomach i really do get the hype 

The Secret History

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